Ryan J. Browne (http://ryanjbrowne.com) holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama, and while in Alabama, he taught poetry and literature classes in medium- and maximum-security prisons with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. Outside Come In, his debut collection, won the 2011 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition.

Michael Carrino has an MFA. in writing from Vermont College.   He is a retired English lecturer at the State University College at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was co-editor and poetry editor of the Saranac Review.  His publications include Some Rescues, (New Poets Series, Inc.) Under This Combustible Sky, (Mellen Poetry Press), Café Sonata, (Brown Pepper Press), and Autumn’s Return to the Maple Pavilion (Conestoga Zen Press), as well as individual poems in numerous journals and reviews.

Lorraine Chung is incarcerated in California.

Russell Evatt's work has recently appeared in Louisville Review, Prism Review, and Whiskey Island.  He lives in Illinois and teaches at Millikin University and Parkland College.

Leah Griesmann is currently a lecturer in writing at San Jose State University where she was a 2010-2011 Steinbeck Fellow in Fiction.  Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Toyon, Swink, Paradigm Volume 3: The Best of Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry 2009, The Cortland Review, Sacramento Stories on Stage, and the UK's Litro Magazine's "Ones to Watch."  She earned an MA in Creative Writing at Boston University and has taught writing and literature at Boston University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Alicia Hilton is an author, law professor, and former FBI Special Agent.  She received a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, an MA from the University of Chicago Department of Humanities, and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley Department of Sociology.  For more information about her poetry and other publications, visit www.aliciahilton.com.

99 Hooker was so irritated by Cormac McCarthy's The Road and its success that he was inspired to write an upbeat, humorous novella about the end of the world—Vinegar Lake, which is excerpted here. 99's words have appeared in numerous settings from the printed page, to recordings, to films and performances. He is currently working on a selection of poems entitled Petting Whales and Shit and a novel Life Between the Cracks. His tombstone will read "Here lies 99 as he did all his life."

Kick Nacozy is a freelance writer and licensed attorney. She graduated from law school in 2008 and began her writing career with a legal bent. She currently analyzes case law for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and has written for the Austin American-Statesman, the Big Bend Sentinel, El Editor and Declare Yourself, among other publications. "Joe" was her first and last client as an attorney.

Sarah Pinder lives in Toronto. A zine maker of more than a decade, her work has been shortlisted for the Expozine Small Press Awards and NOW Magazine’s Best of Toronto. You can find her writing in the anthology She’s Shameless, journals like Room, Canadian Woman Studies and invisible city, and Montreal’s Distroboto art vending machines. Find out what’s she up to next at bitsofstring.wordpress.com

M. B. Powell (fka Marta Powell Harley) earned a PhD from Columbia University and a JD from the University of Washington.  She has published books and articles on medieval literature and served as a staff attorney and law clerk at the Washington State Supreme Court.  Her poems have appeared in America Magazine, Atlanta Review, Dogwood, The Raintown Review, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere.  She lives in Olympia, Washington, and teaches at Pierce College.

Tom Quinn, a health care professional, has had poetry and short fiction published in various journals and magazines, including The Main Street Rag, Paddlefish and Spitball.  He is a husband to one and a father of two and when not travelling the eastern seaboard to youth athletic events, he spends an inordinate amount of time sitting at a table by the back window of a local coffee shop, looking. 

Samantha Reiser is a recent graduate of Harvard College, where her senior thesis, Tomas Simon and Other Poems was completed; the poems here are from this manuscript. She has published poems in various journals, most recently in Lyre Lyre. Her essay “Namibian Shoes” will soon be published in the anthology It’s All About Shoes. Most of her recent work focuses on her experience teaching in Namibia in the summer of 2010.

Courtney Sender is an MFA student at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, where she also teaches. Her work has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Connecticut River Review, and the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, and was named a Glimmer Train Press New Writers Award Finalist. She holds a BA in English from Yale University.

Janice D. Soderling's writing appears in international print and online publications such as Magma Poetry, Horizon Review, Mason's Road, Pedestal, Studio, The Flea, and Literary Bohemian. She received the Harold Witt Memorial Award from Blue Unicorn for 2010 Best of Volume; her poetry has been nominated for Dzanc Best of the Web, Pushcart Prize and twice for Sundress Best of the Net. Her poetry collection was a finalist in the 2011 Kore open competition.

Shanee Stepakoff received an MFA in creative writing from the New School in 2009. She was the psychologist for the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone for over two years.  She also spent two years as psychologist with the Center for Victims of Torture, first in Guinea and later in Jordan.  Her previous publications include over a dozen articles in academic journals, including The Drama Review, The Arts in Psychotherapy and American Psychologist.  She resides in New York City.

Gale Tanner lives in Forsyth, Georgia. His fiction and poetry have been published in River Walk Journal, Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, and 14by14.   He has had a three decade career in health care administration and is currently involved in a project to reduce health disparities in rural Georgia.  Gale is married to Isabelle, and is father of a daughter, Jessica, and a son, Justin.

J. R. Thelin’s two chapbooks are Dorrance, Narrative, History (Pudding House Publications, 2004) and The Way Out West (Concrete Wolf, 2005).  More recently, his full-length poetry manuscript, Breath Into Bone, was selected as winner of the 2009 Smalls Books Poetry Contest and was published in late 2010.  Thelin has resided in Buena Vista, VA since 1999 and currently works at the University of Virginia.

James Tolan is author of the chapbook Red Walls (Dos Madres Press). His poems appear in such journals as American Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Fairy Tale Review, Fulcrum, Gargoyle, Indiana Review, Linebreak, and Ploughshares  as well as a number of anthologies, including the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. He is co-editor of the forthcoming New America, an anthology of contemporary literature (Autumn House Press) and an Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Jeffrey Utzinger earned an MFA from Texas State University, and taught for several years before starting a small business.  His work has appeared in Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, The Cream City Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Journal, Tampa Review, High Plains Literary Review and others.  He lives in Lockhart, Texas with his wife and three children. 

Estha Weiner is co-editor and contributor to Blues For Bill: A Tribute To William Matthews (Akron Poetry Series, 2005), author of The Mistress Manuscript (Book Works, 2009)  and Transfiguration Begins At Home (Tiger Bark Press, Sept., 2009). In The Weather of The World is forthcoming from Ireland's Salmon Poetry in 2012. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including The New Republic and Barrow Street. She is a 2008 nominee for a Pushcart Prize, a 2005 winner of a Paterson Poetry Prize, and a 2008 Visiting Scholar at The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, England. In her previous life, she was an actor and worked for BBC radio.

Paula Yup lives and writes in the Marshall Islands.  She has written poetry since her childhood in Arizona, and later at Occidental College; her MFA is from the Vermont College program.  Her one hundred plus poems have appeared in anthologies (Feather, Fins & Fur, Earth Beneath, Sky Beyond, A Kiss Still a Kiss, What Book!?) and journals (including Earth's Daughters, Mid-American Review).  Her first book, Making a Clean Space in the Sky, was recently published by Evening Street Press.


FALL 2015

Fiction by Diya Abdo, Cara Bayles, Stephanie Dickinson, Paul Hadella, Joe Jarboe, Donald Edem Quist, Alison Ruth

Poems by Austin Alexis, Byron Case, Courtney Lamar Charleston, Jessica Greenbaum, Brad Johnson, Don Kimball, Thom Schramm, Hasanthika Sirisena, Judith Skillman, Jack Vian, Catherine Wald, JJ Amaworo Wilson, Paula Yup

Nonfiction by Lyle May




BookTalk: The Number of Missing by Adam Berlin
March 25, 2015

4:15-5:30pm
Conference Room, 9th fl.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019

In the months after 9/11, David and Mel meet to drink, give each other comfort and reminisce about Paul—Mel’s husband and David’s best friend. The memories are not all good for David. Before Paul died, the two friends fought, brutally questioning each other’s lives. Fueled by anger and grief and too much alcohol, David stumbles through the city while holding onto a silent promise he’s made to a dead friend: he will wait for Mel to fall so he can catch her. Like the best post-war novels, where catastrophe is not an easy catalyst for plot, where characters go on living but not really, is about New York during a time when the city seemed dead. 

*All book talks are free and open to the public. 
Refreshments will be served.

 





J Journal
jjournal@jjay.cuny.edu
Department of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10019